P-I archive: The shocking 1948 murder of Ray Arnold

Today from the seattlepi.com archive we tell of the shocking 1948 murder of Ray E. Arnold.

Arnold operated a gas and service station near the intersection of what’s now Railroad Way South and First Avenue South – a spot near the new northbound on-ramp to the Alaskan Way Viaduct. He opened it in 1928 when Railroad was a much longer street. Today Qwest Field covers where part of the street used to be.

A parking lot near where hot dog vendors line up outside the stadium is the closet spot to where his service station used to be.

Arnold would usually run his service station until about 6:30 or 7 p.m. on weeknights and would then walk out to his car parked at the intersection to drive to his home in the 4100 block of 48th Avenue South.

In the first two decades he ran the store, friends told the P-I he twice was approached by robbers. In the first case, Arnold fought back and the robber fled. The second time someone swung at Arnold when he got out of his car near his home. Again he fought back and the assailant fled.

The area that now has Qwest and Safeco fields had several warehouses for freight companies, and in the 40s it was well known among the workers that Arnold carried lots of cash.

The April 1, 1948 P-I story about Ralph Shelton's confession. (seattlepi.com file)

Shortly after 7 p.m. March 22, 1948, Arnold closed his shop and left with $553.14. Police initially thought his killer hid in the back seat of Arnold’s car and forced him to drive a few hundred feet before he was shot in the head. He’d also been beaten.

Two businessmen, Nels I. Matson and John D. Danberg, found it unusual that Arnold’s car had been parked near a warehouse at 10:15 on a Monday night. They went to check thinking he might have been asleep, and called police after finding the bloody scene with a shattered windshield from where the bullet exited.

Arnold’s clothes had been ransacked, his pockets turned inside out and personal papers strewn about. The initial police estimate was that he was robbed of $1,000.

The murder made the newspaper front pages for days, and a 28-year-old suspect was questioned when Arnold’s funeral was held five days after the killing. But he refused to acknowledge any involvement.

He broke the night of March 31.

That man, Ralph R. Shelton conferred with minister in his jail cell, then told detectives he “wanted to talk.”

Shelton lived in the High Point neighborhood of West Seattle – an area of Cycle Lane that was recently turned into a new housing development. He was arrested the night of Arnold’s murder after police, suspicious of Arnold’s former employee, waited for him at the High Point Housing Project office.

He had worked for Arnold until the previous July, when he was fired after burglarizing a nearby junkyard. He stole a truckload of junked batteries, but the case was suspended when Shelton made restitution.

“I told him that my car was there (on the hill) and asked him if he would drive me to it,” Shelton told P-I reporter George McDowell of the killing. “I was riding in the back seat and after I told him to stop, I struck him on the head with a hammer.

“I didn’t want to hit him hard enough to kill him. After I struck him, he shoved open the driver’s door and started to get out.

“He told me, ‘Wait ‘til I get my keys and I’ll kill you!”

“Then I pulled open the zipper on my coat and drew out my gun and shot him.”

Shelton shoved Arnold’s body over to the right side of the front seat, drove to the High Point Housing Project, changed clothes at his home and burned the old ones, then drove Arnold’s car back to the warehouse parking lot near the service station.

A day later in the office of King County Prosecutor Lloyd Shorett, Arnold’s daughter tearfully confronted Shelton – described by the P-I as a gangling youth from the hill country of Tennessee.

Shelton’s legs were partially paralyzed after being thrown off a mule at age 13. He and his wife, Byrle, came to Seattle in 1945 shortly after being married. They left Seattle the January after he was fired from Arnold’s service station and not long after he was arrested in North Carolina for transporting moonshine.

Shelton was charged with murder, pleaded not guilty, but about a month later led officers to the revolver he used to kill Arnold. It was with the $553.14 buried in an unfinished part of Shelton’s basement at 6242 Cycle Lane.

On June 8, 1948 Shelton was found guilty. The jury recommended the death penalty not be inflicted, and he was sentenced to life in the state penitentiary. In an interview with the P-I’s Frank Lynch, Shelton laughed at the verdict.

His wife, expecting her second child, cried.

The month after Shelton was sentenced, Arnold’s widow, Marion, was left the $39,132 from his estate. Shelton’s wife stayed in High Point for another four years before divorcing him.

“Everyone knew he was generous,” Arnold’s employee, Floyd A. Gilbert, told the P-I the night of his death. “Why, I’ve seen fellows come in here broke to touch him for a cup of coffee and he’d slip them folding money.